Shallow Approach Key to Punch Shot Proficiency (Video) - by Pete Styles
Shallow Approach Key to Punch Shot Proficiency (Video) - by Pete Styles

If you play a lot of golf in windy conditions, a punch shot can be one of the most proficient uses of the ball flight. Try and keep the ball flight lower, to punch it under to the wind, rather to pop the thing up into the air too much like a normal iron shot. So keeping the ball low is quite an important shot in windy conditions. But if your punch shots are consistently rising higher than your expected and drifting to the right hand side, there could be a couple of reasons for that.

Firstly, we have to look at the ball position. Normally when we punch the ball, we often talk about having the ball a little bit further back in our stance. That effectively de-lofts the golf club slightly, helps your hands stay in front of the golf ball. But one risk with that is, you will actually be in this phase of the golf swing where the face might be quite open, open as it comes into the golf ball and if it’s open in that stage, it will push the ball to the right hand side and also an open club face has more loft than a square club face, so an open face is pointing higher into the air. So, if I have the ball too far back in my stance, I don’t make the relevant adjustments, I will be open and pointing it down on the right hand side and up and I get this weak shot that drifts high and right, which is exactly the shot I want to avoid in windy conditions.

So, try and play the ball center or just back of center of smidge, but not too far back, not into position where you can’t square the club face up. Then make sure that we’re moving the body weight into the left hand side as you hit the golf ball, so you can strike down. One other thing is, you just got to make sure that we are not picking the golf club too steeply. If you feel it to punch the ball, you need to really get your wrist cocked and get the club picked up too steep and smash back down on the golf ball. The risk is you just dig underneath the golf ball and pop it back up into the sky anyway. So it might be better just to feel a slightly flat and more rounded takeaway, for hitting these lower punch shots. So pull just around about center, hands nicely ahead and just take the golf club low and slow on the takeaway, a little bit of drive forward, but not too steep on the ball, we don’t have to spin the ball too aggressively up into the air.

The other thing of course will be to take a lower lofted golf club and just hit it one club softer, so rather than taking a 9 iron and really punching into it, which creates loads of back spin, just take an 8 or even a 7 and just be a little bit more 3 quarters with your action, take the spin out, take the speed out of it and just keep the ball flight a little bit softer and a little bit lower and hopefully that will help you improve those punch shots into the greens.

 2012-08-06

If you play a lot of golf in windy conditions, a punch shot can be one of the most proficient uses of the ball flight. Try and keep the ball flight lower, to punch it under to the wind, rather to pop the thing up into the air too much like a normal iron shot. So keeping the ball low is quite an important shot in windy conditions. But if your punch shots are consistently rising higher than your expected and drifting to the right hand side, there could be a couple of reasons for that.

Firstly, we have to look at the ball position. Normally when we punch the ball, we often talk about having the ball a little bit further back in our stance. That effectively de-lofts the golf club slightly, helps your hands stay in front of the golf ball. But one risk with that is, you will actually be in this phase of the golf swing where the face might be quite open, open as it comes into the golf ball and if it’s open in that stage, it will push the ball to the right hand side and also an open club face has more loft than a square club face, so an open face is pointing higher into the air. So, if I have the ball too far back in my stance, I don’t make the relevant adjustments, I will be open and pointing it down on the right hand side and up and I get this weak shot that drifts high and right, which is exactly the shot I want to avoid in windy conditions.

So, try and play the ball center or just back of center of smidge, but not too far back, not into position where you can’t square the club face up. Then make sure that we’re moving the body weight into the left hand side as you hit the golf ball, so you can strike down. One other thing is, you just got to make sure that we are not picking the golf club too steeply. If you feel it to punch the ball, you need to really get your wrist cocked and get the club picked up too steep and smash back down on the golf ball. The risk is you just dig underneath the golf ball and pop it back up into the sky anyway. So it might be better just to feel a slightly flat and more rounded takeaway, for hitting these lower punch shots. So pull just around about center, hands nicely ahead and just take the golf club low and slow on the takeaway, a little bit of drive forward, but not too steep on the ball, we don’t have to spin the ball too aggressively up into the air.

The other thing of course will be to take a lower lofted golf club and just hit it one club softer, so rather than taking a 9 iron and really punching into it, which creates loads of back spin, just take an 8 or even a 7 and just be a little bit more 3 quarters with your action, take the spin out, take the speed out of it and just keep the ball flight a little bit softer and a little bit lower and hopefully that will help you improve those punch shots into the greens.